


side by side, we stand strong

by eynn



Series: i can't go back and lose it all [17]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Aromantic CT-7567 | Rex, Asexual CT-7567 | Rex, Demisexual Anakin Skywalker, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Human Disaster Anakin Skywalker, M/M, Nobody Dies, Post-Order 66, anakin has some therapy without realizing it, aromantic anakin skywalker, baby leia throws up on dooku and anakin is so proud of her, demisexual padme amidala, sith!jedi order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:13:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23608114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eynn/pseuds/eynn
Summary: “I think I just want commitment,” Anakin realizes. “I want to know you won’t leave me. That’s what marriage means to me. Not the stuff other people think it does. It’s like a really intense best friends contract.”Rex snorts, and when he speaks, he sounds tired and hoarse but content. “I understand. I – that’s what I mean when I love, too. All of that.”“And what marriage means to me is, you’re both disaster gremlins, but you’re my disaster gremlins and I can kiss you whenever I want without the tabloids making a scandal of it,” Padmé says. “Go to sleep, boys. Shmi is bringing Padma back in the morning and we’ll need it.”Anakin falls asleep with his face comfortably squashed into the back of Rex’s neck, holding hands with Padmé, and with a happier heart than he has had since he was a child.
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/CT-7567 | Rex/Anakin Skywalker
Series: i can't go back and lose it all [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658362
Comments: 35
Kudos: 769





	side by side, we stand strong

It’s been a weird few days, Anakin feels.

He’d expected that even though the people that were in his mindscape were nice, the ones who hadn’t been would not be nearly as understanding. But Master Windu hadn’t even yelled at him for being married secretly? He’d come around a few hours after Padma was born to congratulate them and seemed genuinely happy, and had even held her for a few minutes and made silly faces at her?

And Yoda had been so kind when he was checking out his mindscape. Anakin had expected criticism and pain, but Yoda’s presence had actually made things feel better. That hadn’t happened since he was first learning how to build his mindscape.

Thankfully, he hasn’t had to really see anyone since Padma was born. Padmé’s been tired, so she’s been staying in their rooms, and he’s stayed with her as a good husband and father should. Rex has been most of their contact with the others, apart from the notes and holocalls they leave them every few hours with questions or offers or just requests for more cute baby pictures.

And hasn’t that been bizarre.

And then Kix had come running into their rooms with the news that he and Cody had finally figured out why Obi-Wan was still so out of it, and Anakin had hurried to his side. Rex had dragged him away after only a few minutes to eat and sleep before coming back, but now he’s back, sitting in the surprisingly comfortable chair by his mentor’s side. Cody is sleeping on a bedroll he’s dragged into the corner.

Anakin wonders what exactly is going on with that, but after a while he shrugs it away. It’s not his place to know. After all, Rex has been just as clingy to him and Padmé. It’s probably just more of the instinctive fussing all the clones subject them to once in a while.

Obi-Wan looks . . . not great, but not as horrible as he had, either. Anakin keeps talking quietly to him, feeling lost when there is silence. He’d rambled about the amazing new arm that matched his own that he’d built for a solid two hours, about the reverse engineering he was trying to do on the ancient temple defenses for another, and now was talking about anything and everything that floated across the holoscreen of his mind.

“So, I was thinking, that’d be really cool if we put some in here. They must have had about thirty loth-cats, and their whole house was done up so the cats could go from one end of their house to the other without ever touching the ground. We could get even more involved, with ziplines and rope swings and things. It’d be good training for battlefields. Plus, could you even imagine being able to just—” Anakin makes a wild waving motion “—zipline into a Council meeting? It’d be hilarious. And it’d save a lot of time.”

He contemplates the ceiling for a while.

“It’d be good tactical training for the young ones as well. If they got used to looking up and around for people while moving around, it’d help them a lot with their spatial awareness and with staying safe in combat.”

“That’s a good point,” says Master Windu’s voice from behind him, and Anakin almost jumps out of his skin. He shoots to his feet and hurriedly tries to straighten his robes from the crumpled mess they are in.

“Master Windu! I didn’t hear you come in. I was just sitting with Obi-Wan,” he stammers.

Something about the man has always put him on edge. It seems to be lacking that now, and that makes him wary. Was it something the vines put in his head, or is he still misinterpreting and misremembering things?

“I see that,” he answers, pulling a chair in and sitting.

Anakin blinks at him. “I, uh, do you need anything?”

“No, not at all. I’m just here to keep Obi-Wan company for a while.”

“Oh,” he says, feeling small and useless. “I’ll be going, then.”

“You don’t have to. I’d like to hear more about your ideas for renovating the Temple.”

“I – uh, it wasn’t serious. I was just joking.” Anakin sits down again uneasily, watching Windu’s hands and face for cues.

The man watches him for a few minutes before sighing and leaning back in his chair, running a hand over his face. “Skywalker, I mean you no harm.”

Anakin nods slowly and tries to be less obvious about watching him.

“Yoda told me that after attempting to assist you in clearing your mind after you woke, he discovered some . . . constructs, I suppose would be the best term for them, in your mind that were also in his. I have also discovered signs of them in my own mind.”

“The vines?”

“He described them as vines, or holes where vine-like plants would have been, yes. In our minds they are still there, though withered and dead. In yours, he said that nearly all of them were gone.”

Thinking of the biggest vine in the crack in his shields, Anakin can’t hold back a shudder. “I tried to dig them out while I was stuck in my mindscape, but I couldn’t get the bigger ones out.”

“I’m not surprised.”

He begins to bristle in indignation, but Windu carries on.

“They are visible representations of a mental attack carried out over years, extremely difficult for even a trained healer who specializes in them to remove and even harder for someone under their influence to detect. It’s only because Sidious is dead and is no longer using them that Yoda and I were even able to find them in our own mindscapes. The sheer amount of power and control over that power you had to be able to remove even one of the smallest strands of the leech while he was still alive is – honestly, it’s staggering.”

Master Windu just complimented him? Anakin frowns in confusion. That wasn’t what he was expecting.

“We have formed a working hypothesis that Sidious was not only using the leeches to control you and influence your thoughts, but he was also planting smaller ones on the rest of us to serve as mental vents for the things he couldn’t act on. We think he planted his anger on you, his arrogance on Yoda, and his judgmental impulses on me. Clearly, more of us need to do some deep meditation and see if their own mindscapes have been tampered with to check if this is true for us as a whole, or if he only went after Council members, but the point I am trying to make is.” Windu sighs again. “Skywalker, I apologize for the insults and slights I have given you over the years. I was wrong. In part they were motivated by Sidious, but the desire had to be there to give him a foothold. The responsibility rests with me.”

Anakin blinks at him. He wants to say a lot of things, but what comes out is “Why do you never call me by my name?”

It’s Windu’s turn to be confused. “Because you have never given me permission to do so?”

“What? You know my name, why--?”

A look of sudden understanding followed by sadness passes over his face. “I think this is yet another thing we failed to tell you,” he mutters. “It’s part of our etiquette. Last names are used until permission is given for someone to use your first name. It’s a sign of respect, just like using the title ‘master’ for someone who has clearly dedicated their will to thoroughly understanding an aspect of the Force. We grow up knowing this, but we never thought to tell you when you joined us. I’m sorry.”

“Oh. Then, um, you can call me Anakin.”

“And please call me Mace,” he says, and whoa, yeah, Anakin’s going to feel weird about that for a long time. “So what was your idea about the ziplines into the Council Room? I’m strangely interested.”

~

After talking to Windu, no, Mace, for way longer than he ever thought he would about installing a system of catwalks, tunnels, ziplines, and swinging ropes across the Temple, of all things, Anakin has to go back to his quarters, leaving Obi-Wan in the hands of Kix and Helix and the rest of the clones. He agreed with Padmé and Rex that he wouldn’t stay out for longer than six hours.

He has projects to work on and a daughter to look after and he also needs to sleep and eat and live, is their reasoning, and Obi-Wan does have more people to be with him than just Anakin.

On his way back to his quarters he sees his mother walking towards him and considers diving into a room. She’s already seen him, though, and it would be obvious and awkward to suddenly run away from her, so he steels himself to greet her.

He can’t look at her without feeling phantom claws in his brain.

“Anakin,” she says, coming up to him, looking up at him. Force. The last clear memory he has of her, she’d still been able to carry him on her hip. When did he get taller than she is?

“Mother,” he says stiltedly, and her brow furrows with worry.

“You came to see me every week when you were a padawan,” she says quietly. “At first, you were bright and happy and I knew I’d made the right choice, letting the Jedi buy you and free you. But when you became older, tall as me and then taller, you grew more and more distant, as if you were unaware of your own body and surroundings. I worried for a long time if someone was drugging you or hurting you. I even got Obi-Wan investigated, in case he was abusing you.”

A horrified denial sticks in Anakin’s throat. How could anyone ever think that Obi-Wan would hurt him on purpose?

“But he wasn’t, and you were always behaving normally everywhere else, so I thought it was merely part of your growing up and becoming independent, so I let it go.” She reaches up and cups his cheek with her hand, and he is adult and child at the same time, in the cool halls of the Jedi Temple and in the hot sands of Tatooine.

“I should have pressed harder. I should have spent more time looking for answers. I might have been able to keep Sidious from getting so far into your mind.” She gently tilts his head down a little more. “Aayla has said that you don’t remember me after we said goodbye on Tatooine, when Qui-Gon took you away.”

Anakin breathes in and out and manages a tiny nod.

“She told me that Sidious planted a memory of my death in your mind.”

He bites his lip hard and tries to keep his mouth from quivering. “Sand people, in their camp, so much blood and I was holding you and I couldn’t save you even though I was Jedi—”

“Oh, Ani,” Shmi says, and holds him close as he drops to his knees and buries his face in her stomach, clinging to her like he had the last night before he was taken. “My first and dearest love. It’s all right. It’s all right now. The liar is gone.”

She’s real and warm and her arms are around him. Anakin presses himself closer to his mother and wraps himself in her Force signature like he used to do when he was a child.

Another piece of the biggest vine crumbles and disappears. The claws vanish.

~

He spends the following days happier than he has been in years. Padmé and Rex and Padma are his constant companions, and slowly, so slowly, they coax Rex into losing his stiffness and formality around them.

The first time he calls them by name without prompting, they wait until he leaves and then dance around the kitchen, whooping and thoroughly upsetting Padma with their celebration.

The first time he unthinkingly drops down to sit right beside Anakin on the couch instead of taking the chair furthest away from them or standing against the wall, Padmé beams at both of them with so much affection that Anakin thinks he might die. They end up all three of them snuggled together for most of the rest of the day, slowly rotating so all of them get a turn in the middle, Padma sleeping in her cradle or on their laps.

She sleeps a lot. All the medics and all the information he can find on babies say it’s normal and healthy, so as long as she keeps eating and isn’t crying, Anakin is happy.

He’s getting pretty tired of Padmé and Rex cooing from the doorway and then taking endless holopics of him leaning over Padma’s cradle and watching her sleep, though.

After things settle down even more and Saesee and Kit are almost back to normal, and only Shaak and Obi-Wan need constant medical care, his mother comes to join them as well. She seems conscious of her place in their family at first, but one day he walks in to see her hugging Padmé in the middle of the kitchen while Padmé, looking exhausted, cries on her shoulder and snuffles about worrying about Padma, and from then on, Shmi is much more comfortable about coming to see them and hold her granddaughter.

She’s holding Padma the first time Rex kisses him on the cheek in response to being handed a cup of caf in the morning, and then turns scarlet and bolts out of the door without even putting his armor on. 

Anakin wants to run after him, but Padmé talks him out of it and into giving Rex some space, and Shmi takes Padma for the day to let them have some space to figure out their feelings. 

Later Anakin hears stories of how his daughter became an honorary member of the Wolfpack and how she smiled at Plo, which seems to earn his undying devotion, and then promptly turned around and threw up on Dooku who was also there for some reason, and he laughs and is so proud of her.

Rex comes back after hours have gone by and they have sat waiting for him, and even though he tries to sneak in for his things that have somehow migrated into their spare room, they catch him in time.

They learn that he’s asexual and also aromantic, and that he feels it’s unfair to anyone for them to be in a relationship with him. Padmé, with diplomatic grace, says that that is some of the dumbest bantha shit she has ever heard.

After all, both she and Anakin are demisexual, and Anakin himself is aromantic. It’s almost a miracle from the Force that she actually conceived a child, since most of the time even when they agree to have sex it just turns into an aggressive cuddling session.

Honestly, it’s a relief to both of them to learn that the person they have both fallen for is the same as them.

They spend the night in the same bed, Rex in the middle and Anakin and Padmé curled into his sides. He’s still sniffling occasionally.

“You are not broken,” Padmé mumbles after one especially loud half-sob. Her hand comes up to pet his hair. “Just because you don’t want sex doesn’t mean you’re broken.”

“Mmm,” Anakin agrees. “Just because you don’t look at someone and go ‘ooooh I want to have sex with that total stranger because their face looks good’ or whatever people do doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It’s like . . .” he spaces out for a moment. Rex is really warm and it’s amazing. “It’s like how some people just don’t like mechanics,” he says finally. “Some people do, and some people don’t care either way, and some people hate it. But nobody goes around telling the people who don’t that they’re, like, less of a person because of it.”

He can feel Padmé’s squint even in the dark. It’s her ‘you made a good argument but framed it so oddly I wonder if you’re sentient’ face.

“And like, I love Padmé, and I love you, but it’s not the kind of love where I want to – argh, I don’t even know what it is? How do I describe something I can’t feel?”

“Describe around it,” Padmé advises. Between them, Rex is calming as he listens.

“Okay. Well, it’s the kind of love where I want to walk into the place I know I’m safe and have you there. I want to be there for you to come back to when you’re having a bad day, and I want you to be there for me too. I want to know I can touch you when I need someone to hold me, or I can ask you to just flop on top of me after I have a nightmare and need some grounding, without it being weird. I’d like to kiss you sometimes, but not if it makes you uncomfortable. And I don’t really want it to be all . . . squishy. I like how you look, but not in a way that makes me want to possess you with my body. It’s like how stars are beautiful, how birds in flight are beautiful, how a code sequence that runs perfectly is beautiful.” Anakin frowns. “I don’t really feel the kind of things that people who are married are supposed to. I don’t get the point of romantic dates and flowers and gifts and putting on special clothes that show off skin. It doesn’t do anything for me apart from sometimes look nice, if it’s you inside it and not some dressed-up doll. Padmé likes those kinds of things sometimes, though, so we do them when we have time. I don’t mind them, I just don’t – they’re not a thing I need.” He stops.

“I think what he means is, he’d rather sit in a dirt pile eating ration bars with us after a battle because we’re alive, than get dressed up and go out to a fancy private restaurant because it’s the first time we’ve had to alone together in months,” Padmé adds dryly. “Though sometimes the two things feel very similar.”

“I think I just want commitment,” Anakin realizes. “I want to know you won’t leave me. That’s what marriage means to me. Not the stuff other people think it does. It’s like a really intense best friends contract.”

Rex snorts, and when he speaks, he sounds tired and hoarse but content. “I understand. I – that’s what I mean when I love, too. All of that.”

“And what marriage means to me is, you’re both disaster gremlins, but you’re my disaster gremlins and I can kiss you whenever I want without the tabloids making a scandal of it,” Padmé says. “Go to sleep, boys. Shmi is bringing Padma back in the morning and we’ll need it.”

Anakin falls asleep with his face comfortably squashed into the back of Rex’s neck, holding hands with Padmé, and with a happier heart than he has had since he was a child.


End file.
